The affection of his mother preserved him from absolute want; and soon he became quaker preacher and author; and his “Sandy Foundation Shaken” was published, which led to his imprisonment in the Tower. Here he remained for seven months, during which he wrote his “No Cross, No Crown,” the most celebrated of his works. The steadfastness of his spirit was shown by this imprisonment. In vain the good-natured Charles II. wished to lure him to submission; he could not or would not gainsay his conscience. After his liberation, in 1669, he was reconciled to his father through the intervention of the Duke of York, but his adherence to his quaker principles remained unshaken. The following year, the Conventicle Act being passed, Penn was one of the first sufferers under it. He was committed to Newgate for preaching at what was called “a riotous and seditious assembly,” which was merely one of those out-of-doors meetings which the resolute Quakers held when driven out by force from their meeting-houses. The famous trial of Penn and Mead at the Old Bailey followed, in which an English jury, as resolute in the right as the Quakers themselves, asserted and maintained the prerogative of independent judgment in defiance of the bench, though they were fined forty marks each, and Penn was returned to prison. The same year Admiral Penn died, testifying to his son on his death-bed, that if the Quakers remained true to that which was in them, they would regenerate the world. William Penn inherited from his father property to the value of £1,500 per annum, and a claim on government to the amount of £16,000. The following year he was again a prisoner in Newgate, one of the most wofully noisome prisons at that time in London, where he lay for six months. In 1677, in company with George Fox and Robert Barclay, he paid a “religious visit” to Holland and Germany, distributing pamphlets wherever they went, seeds of liberty and truth, which sprang up into after plentiful harvest. And not alone did they address the people, but kings and princes, palatine-princes and magistrates, promulgating everywhere the universal principle of truth, and awakening many souls to its consciousness. The year after his return, Penn pleaded before a committee of the House of Commons, that the affirmation of the Quaker might be legalised instead of an oath; and an enactment for this purpose would have passed but for the sudden prorogation of parliament.